The CRTC released its new Commercial Radio Policy on Friday. I wanted to wait awhile before commenting on it, since my main focus for the past few days has been on the policy's specific impact on community radio. My initial impression -- that it's mostly a do-nothing policy -- remains, but I think I have a better idea of why that is, and what it means.
Some of my colleagues are a bit surprised by how little this new policy does. They, like me, see commercial radio as a failing medium. In terms of program quality, things are about as bad as they have ever been; most commercial radio is backward-looking, repetitive, and unadventurous. The music ecosystem -- that complex relationship among artists, labels, radio, and the audience -- also seems very fragile right now, with music sales in decline, fewer new musicians getting airplay, and sales of Canadian artists stagnant. And radio listenership is shrinking, especially among young people and teens, who value the flexibility of iPods and satellite radio.
But the new radio policy didn't try to address these things. There were no significant changes to Canadian Content requirements, no new regulations to encourage airplay of new artists, and the CRTC long ago abandoned efforts to try to make radio actually sound good. In a study also released last week, the Commission claimed that new technologies will have only a marginal impact on broadcasting for the next while.
Why the disconnect? One should realize that commercial radio's main measure of success isn't any of the challenges I just mentioned... it's profit. And on that count, radio has never been more successful, with a 24% increase in 2005 to an amazing $277 million. That's more than a 20% margin.
In our current climate of deregulation, it's the industry's perception of itself as successful that becomes the reality of policy, not what we, as listeners, know. In other words, if radio doesn't think it's broken, the CRTC won't try to fix it.
There may be another reason why the CRTC is reluctant to address the systemic challenges I outlined above: it doesn't know if it can.
As I mentioned above, new Canadian musicians have a lot of trouble getting radio airplay in Canada, and one of the big themes of the review process was how this could be fixed. Nearly everyone talked about it, and many people supported some new regs suggested by CIRAA, the organization that claims to represent new artists. Many were a bit surprised at the hearing when CIRAA disowned its proposed CANCON Pro formula, revealing that it would have actually lowered airplay of new music. After that, their new recommendation, a 33% "new music" quota, wasn't taken seriously.
There is also evidence that the benefits from the CRTC's most important content regulation, the once reliable Canadian Content requirements, are diminishing. The last increase in CanCon, from 30% to 35% in 1998, had less impact on sales of Canadian music than similar increases in the past. Raising CanCon, as many in the music industry had suggested, would have increased their revenue from copyright, but probably not their sales.
As I suggested to the Commission in my own submission, content regulations are becoming increasingly less effective tools, and direct funding for new media creation and Canadian content should be emphasized instead. In that vein, the CRTC replaced its confusing system of Canadian Talent Development, originally established to support Canadian music from radio revenues, with a better funded and more focused Canadian Content Development (CCD) policy.
It's well known that too much talent development funding ended up benefiting broadcasters, rather than artists. The new rules tighten things up a bit, and also recognize that commercial radio revenues should go to support new and non-commercial media, including community radio. The Commission failed to require specific levels for this, but it's a start.
As many have said this week, the new radio policy just tweaks the system, rather than presenting a needed vision for the future. My fear is that the decline in radio listenership might hit a tipping point and begin to accelerate quickly, perhaps when a technology like ubiquitous WiFi radio takes off. Not that I'll cry too many tears for Canadian commercial radio; it stopped being an important part of my life many years ago.
